[TUHS] Do you have any historical UNIX computers?

[Alexander Schreiber]

On Mon, Jun 09, 2025 at 05:27:17PM -0400, Vicente Collares via TUHS wrote:
> Hello Henry,
> 
> On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 15:57:56 -0400
> Henry Bent <henry.r.bent at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Saying that does make me think - if you're not quite as worried about
> > running as many OSes as possible and you like the form factor, you might
> > also consider an SS10 or 20.  It will be a little larger investment but a
> > much higher powered machine, depending on how it's configured.
> 
> I would rather go for the more powerful system than the one that supports
> the most OSes. So I'm currently leaning more towards the SPARCstation 10 or
> 20. I'll give eBay and the like to a look to see what I can find.

The first Unix I ever got into contact was SunOS on SPARCstation ELC
machines (diskless, razorsharp monochrome display) that filled one of
our university computing pools. The first paying job was doing web/backend
development as a student job on a Sun Ultra 1 running Solaris. That
somehow left a fondness for SPARC behind ...

A few years ago, a Sun V100 fell into my hands (being decommissioned)
and it's serving me running NetBSD to this day (and later got some
V100 friends as the board has some .. useful properties).

The most priced of the SUN machines here so far is an Ultra-45 (dual
CPU) that I managed to acquire a few months ago - the very last workstation
SUN built with an actual UltraSPARC CPU. It happily runs NetBSD 10.1 here.

> > Al Kossow made a good point - all of these machines are going to be slow by
> > modern standards.  How slow are you willing to put up with?  Do you want
> > something that was a representation of an average workstation at the time,
> > or do you want to go all out and build a four processor SunOS 4 monster?
> 
> I don't mind having a machine that is slow by modern standards. I would like
> a system that is representative of the high-end at the time of its release.
> I'm not looking to cobble together the most powerful Sun workstation
> possible, a Frankenstein's monster of computer parts that would be unheard
> of at the time.

For that: The above-mentioned Ultra-45 is essentially the end of the line
(1 or 2 (depending on board) 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC IIIi CPUs, 8/16G RAM) and
still pretty speedy for being almost 30y (introduced 1995, discontinued
2001) old. Still official and not a FrankenWorkstation.

> > Are you more interested in having fast interactive performance, so you
> > invest in a higher end SBUS graphics card?  Lots of options to consider.
> When it comes to graphics, the system should be able to comfortably run a
> window manager and simple programs with GUIs. I'm not looking for something
> that can do 3D or advanced graphics.

Haven't tried that yet, but I've got the fastest graphics card officially
available for the Ultra-45 (XVR-2500, a 3DLabs Wildcat Realizm) sitting
in a box next to the machine (currently equipped with the lowly XVR-100).
It's being kept company by a dual SCSI PCIe card and a 10G PCI-X NIC (all
on the officially supported addons list for the Ultra-45) in their own
boxes.

Once I find the round tuits ...

Kind regards,
           Alex.
-- 
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
 looks like work."                                      -- Thomas A. Edison